[Adam] Smith was not the proponent of any one
class. He was a slave to his system. His whole economic philosophy
stemmed from his unquestioning faith in the ability of the market to guide
the system to its point of highest return. The market—that
wonderful social machine—would take care of society’s
needs if it was left alone. Don’t try to do good, says
Smith. Let good emerge as the by-product of selfishness.

Robert L. Heilbroner

It had been held that the economic system, any
capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself,
it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an
aberration, a wholly temporary failing.

John Kenneth Galbraith

[Keynes’ book The General Theory of
Employment, Interest, and Money] was revolutionary: no other word
will quite do. It stood economics on its head for the book had a startling
and dismaying conclusion. There was no automatic safety mechanism
after all! Rather than a see-saw which would always right itself, the
economy resembled an elevator: it could be going up or down, but it
could also be standing perfectly still. And it was just as capable of
standing still on the ground floor as at the top of the shaft. A depression,
in other words, might not cure itself at all; the economy could lie prostrate
indefinitely, like a ship becalmed.

Robert L. Heilbroner

Capitalism has never anywhere provided good houses
at moderate cost. Housing, it seems unnecessary to stress, is an important
adjunct of a successful urban life. Nor does capitalism provide good
health services, and when people live close together with attendant health
risks, these too are important. Nor does capitalism provide efficient
transportation for people—another essential of the life of the
Metropolis. In Western Europe and Japan the failure of capitalism in the
fields of housing, health and transportation is largely, though not
completely, accepted. There industries have been intensively socialized.
In the United States there remains the conviction that, however contrary
the experience, private enterprise will eventually serve.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Then came the second Amsterdam discovery,
although the principle was known elsewhere. [Bank] deposits...did not
need to be left idly in the bank. They could be lent. The bank then got
interest. The borrower then had a deposit that he could spend. But the
original deposit still stood to the credit of the original depositor. That too
could be spent. Money, spendable money, had been created. Let no one
rub his or her eyes. It’s still being done—every day. The
creation of money by a bank is as simple as this, so simple, I’ve
often said, that the mind is slightly repelled.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The very idea of a government that can create money
for itself allowing banks to create money that the government then
borrows and pays interest on is so preposterous that it staggers the
imagination. Either everyone in government in charge of the procedure is
deficient in intelligence or they have been bought and paid for by those
who profit from their venality and infidelity to the public interest.

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is
restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred
responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is
idle and futile... Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters
not who makes the nation’s laws... Usury once in control will
wreck any nation.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

Capital movements are no longer necessarily related
to the production of goods and services. Through the financial markets of
the world, capital movements today are overwhelmingly concerned with
the capture of and trade in property rights, the ownership of assets that
magnify a corporation’s wealth, power, and control. It is what
John Maynard Keynes described as “a casino
world”—wealth without worth.

Eric Kierans

Consider the hypothesis that the world is being
steered by moneyed interests with special access to governments. This
would have obvious implications for democratic reforms. It would mean
that it is nearly useless to resort to reasoned arguments of a kind that the
powers-that-be understand very well but consider not in their interests to
recognize.

Thoughts about Capitalism

A society in which consumption has to be artificially
stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash
and waste.

Behind the abstraction known as “the
markets” lurks a set of institutions designed to maximize the
wealth and power of the most privileged group of people in the world, the
creditor-rentier class of the First World and their junior partners in the
Third.

Capitalism is the only society in human history in
which neither tradition nor conscious direction supervises the total effort
of the community; it is the only society in which the future, the needs for
tomorrow, are entirely left to an automatic system.

Robert L. Heilbroner

Capitalism is the philosophy of greed. It breaks down
the bonds of solidarity in a society.

Bob Rae

Capital, never concerned with distribution, is now
less and less concerned with production. Capital is driving for power, for
the control over markets, lands, resources. Capital, in corporate hands,
can move anywhere and thus demand and get the utmost in concessions
and privileges as well as the freedom to operate in the interest of ever-increasing wealth and assets.

Eric Kierans

Economic growth has no limits. If you hear anyone
tell you that there’s a limit to growth, they’re wrong and
we should avoid those kinds of people. That’s why we’re
so successful in the Conservative government.

Deputy Economic Minister under Mulroney

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably
be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative
system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely
objectionable.

Maynard Keynes

Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of a
capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the
poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them.

Jawaharlal Nehru

The chief safeguard of personal freedom in a
democratic society is the anarchy and disorder of capitalist
individualism.

The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to
enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to
do.

George Orwell, (from England Your England,
1941)

There is hardly anything in the world that some man
can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people
who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.

John Ruskin

There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of
capital.

John Maynard Keynes

This is the standard procedure for corporate growth
these days; one company buys up another on loans that are floated on the
basis of future earnings, and the monopoly or oligopoly created in this
way produces the necessary funds by squeezing out competition, and
passing the costs along to the consumer. The bucket that holds the new
wealth is called a corporation.

Eric Kierans

Too much capitalism does not mean too many
capitalists, but too few capitalists.

When market dependence reaches a certain threshold
it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act
autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply
experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.

Ivan Illich

When well-divided property has disappeared and
Capitalism has taken its place, you cannot reverse the process without
acting against natural economic tendencies.